Coast’s only epileptic centre a blessing for residents

For the last five years, 59-year-old Horres Chanji has been trying to come to terms with the fact that he is epileptic, after a robbery attack in Kisauni, Mombasa.

Mr Chanji, a resident of Kilifi and driver at Coast Development Authority (CDA), said the 2015 incident, which left him with a big scar on the head, changed his life forever.

“I was admitted and discharged, but it was only a year later that I began suffering seizures,” he told nation.africa at the Kilifi County Referral Hospital Epilepsy Center, where he had gone to pick his medicine.

“My worst nightmares came alive when I went for a medical check-up and it was discovered that the internal bleeding in my skull had affected the brain,” he said.

Mr Chanji, who is soon set to retire, says doctors placed him on medication after they diagnosed him with epilepsy.

“The medication reduced convulsions from once or twice a day to about once a month,” he says. 

At one point, he opted to stop taking the medicine after the convulsions stopped for a prolonged period, but they came back stronger after a month.

His wife, who had accompanied him to the facility, says the family panicked when their breadwinner suffered convulsions for the first time at a funeral.

“He began convulsions after viewing the body. It was not normal for him since none of our family members has ever suffered from it,” she says.

“We thought he was possessed by demons until one of his children, who is a nurse suggested that he could be suffering from epilepsy.”

In another case, Angela Kuto, a mother of a three-year-old girl, was also at the Kilifi facility, having also gone for medication. She says her daughter began convulsions at the age of six months.

“We thought we were losing our daughter when it first happened and rushed her to Malindi sub county hospital, where they referred us to Kilifi,” she says adding, “We later learnt that she usually suffers convulsions whenever she plays in the sun or when the weather is hot.”

Gilbert Kaingu, an epilepsy clinician at Kilifi County Referral Hospital, says they usually receive up to 40 patients per day who come from as far as Mombasa and Kwale counties.

“Kilifi County Referral Hospital epilepsy centre is the only facility in the region that does diagnosis like Electroencephalography (EEG) free of charge, an expensive venture in private facilities, which most locals cannot afford,” he says.

During an EEG test, scalps are usually placed on the head to help record the electrical activity of the brain through electrodes. 
Where the results show changes in brain activity that may be useful in diagnosing brain conditions, especially epilepsy and other seizure disorders.

Epilepsy causes

The clinician says epilepsy is caused by several issues including stroke, bleeding in the brain, traumatic brain injuries sometimes due to accidents, making a person develop convulsions.

“In children who had problems at birth, like prolonged labour and caesarian section has to be carried out to the mother, some normally develop birth defects and if not checked, it causes damage leading to convulsions,” he adds.

Mr Kaingu says most of their patients are usually referred to the facility after suffering convulsions, loss of consciousness, delayed speech, anxiety, excess and memory loss, among other symptoms.

“Those that we feel it's not epilepsy we link them up with other departments such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy for treatment,” he says.

Mr Kaingu said they have attended to almost 3,000 patients at the facility in the last 10 years, although not all of them were diagnosed with active epilepsy.

“Once these patients are followed up and they don't get seizures for three to five years, EEG is then carried out to ensure everything is normal,” he says.

The medic also says they rely on a patient's medical history before carrying out investigations to establish cases of epilepsy in both adults and children.

“For instance, we carry out an investigation on epilepsy when a patient says she or he had more than one convulsion within 24 hours’” he says.

In cases where the patient is a child, he said they also rely on their medical history; for instance, if the child suffered convulsions without having a fever, malaria, or meningitis.

“You find a child has been having convulsions in March and may be November. We say since they have two unprovoked series of convulsions, it is a sign of epilepsy and needs to be followed up,” he adds.

The patients in the facility usually receive anticonvulsant medication at no cost.

“We have those whose convulsions are well managed and are able to work without being affected by seizures, although patients react differently to medication,” he says.